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Chapter 3: Out to Sea
The day after meeting Crow and asking Garrett to look into the mysterious symbol, Thea, Alvyn, Berrain, and Haroof were once again chatting with Roscoe at the Smiling Eel Tavern. They were discussing the city's ongoing rat problem when Drake came into the tavern to speak with them. He had spent the last few weeks following up on the letter they had recovered from the smugglers' den, and he believed he had located the smugglers' ship. Although it didn't carry any unusual markings, over the past few months the ship had repeatedly left and returned to port, taking neither passengers nor cargo in or out. Drake asked the adventurers to try and sneak onto the ship, which was scheduled to make another voyage that very evening, and discover what it was up to. Before heading down to the docks, the group decided to visit the Shrine of Tymora and request an audience with Nari the Trickster, Chosen of Tymora, hoping that he could shed some light on recent events. After telling him about their investigation and showing him the symbol, Nari revealed that he did indeed recognize it: it was a mark used by the assassins of the Kenku when they were preparing for war. With this information, the group left the Shrine and headed to the docks to look for a way onto the ship. After locating the smugglers' vessel, called the Black Adder, the adventurers spent a few hours surveying the scene. Just as Drake had said, although the ship was making preparations to set sail, they were loading neither cargo nor passengers. As they deliberated on how best to sneak aboard, a fire broke out in a nearby tenement. Thea heroically went inside to rescue a baby who was trapped on the top floor. In gratitude, the child's mother promised to do whatever she could to repay them. Her brother happened to be a well-known sailor around this part of the docks, so she introduced the group to him, and he was able to use his influence to get them all positions on the Black Adder. Once aboard the ship, the adventurers laid low. The crew and captain seemed relatively unremarkable, but they were unable to get into the captain's cabin. For a full day and a night, the ship sailed due west; finally, at dawn the next day, it simply stopped in an empty stretch of ocean. The captain of the ship ordered all of the crew below decks, but Haroof was able to find a suitable hiding spot and watch the proceedings. Out from inside the captain's cabin came a man dressed in simple traveler's clothing. His open shirt revealed the same mysterious symbol that the group had previously seen tattooed on the leader of the smugglers back in Freeport. As Haroof watched, the man leaned over the railing of the ship and had a conversation in a language he did not understand with what appeared to be a sahuagin. After concluding his business, the traveler turned back toward the captain's cabin and noticed Haroof. The adventurers were dragged up onto the deck, and the traveler, agitated that they had seen his face, ordered the ship's captain to execute them. A brief fight ensued; in the end, the captain was dead and the group was surrounded by a mob of angry sailors. The traveler decided that they should be fed to his special "passenger" in the lowest deck, and they were taken down and locked inside the cargo hold with a manticore. Luckily, they were barely able to defeat the beast. However, while they were planning their next move, massive harpoons attached to chains smashed through both sides of the ship and started to pull it apart. The ship had fallen under attack by marauding minotaurs, and the adventurers, the traveler, and the sailors were all captured and taken as slaves.